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Wednesday, February 17, 2016

The 10 Worst Film Accents of the Past 10 Years

Terrible accents in film are a dime a dozen. For whatever reason, no
matter how talented an actor is, they just can't manage to get a
particular accent down, causing the entire film to suffer because of it.
But hey, they're getting paid a lot of money to perform badly, so we're
going to continue to throw millions at them to see it. Besides, if it
weren't for the constant flow of terrible accents coming in year by
year, we wouldn't have been able to compile this list of the worst movie
accents of the past decade. Let's start with 2013...

We felt bad for putting this one first because, come on, who wants to
hate on Tom Hanks? But unfortunately, his poor excuse for a former
Boston cab driver accent takes you right out of the movie instantly.
However, because it's Hanks, you can pull an "it is what it is" pretty
quickly and get on with the film, which has so much more going for it
than one accent can tear down. Still, it's irritating.

Quentin Tarantino, "Django Unchained" (2012)

Accent: Australian

"Django Unchained" was a pretty solid flick save for a couple of
strange cameos (Jonah Hill *cough*) that were very distracting. But no
cameo was more off-putting than that of the director himself, Quentin
Tarantino. Why was he doing an Australian accent at all, and on top of
that, why was it so ungodly bad? Well, as far as the latter is
concerned, it was rumored that Quentin just simply couldn't hack a
southern accent. Regarding the former, apparently it was a much longer
scene and was supposed to be played by a much better actor.

Everyone would probably agree that Anne Hathaway is a pretty good
actress by and large. Yet, she was unable to hold a British accent for
the duration of a less-than-two-hour film. We're not going to try and
argue that of all accents, British is one of the easier ones to pull off
by just impersonating Michael Caine in your own voice, but it's never a good sign when British critics like The Telegraph's
Robbie Collin are referring to your performance as "the most honkingly
rubbish Yorkshire accents you've ever heard." Maybe if they'd thrown
more "honkinglys" into the script, she could have pulled it off,
considering that may be the most British-y criticism we've ever read.

For an Australian who can pull off a near flawless American accent,
boy, does Mel Gibson have a hard time with that Boston twang. With some
accents (like, perhaps, Australian), we'd almost argue that you should
go big or go home if you want it to sound decent. But apparently the
same rules don't apply to an Aussie, because Mel's going pretty big
here, and we made the obvious ahhb-sahh-vation that it's bad.

If you are doing an accent well, people shouldn't even be able to
tell you are doing one at all. Apparently Taylor Kitsch didn't get that
memo when he signed on to play Gambit in the first failed attempt at a
Wolverine solo flick. Not only does his accent seem to come and go as it
pleases, but nothing about it sounds remotely like he's even talked to
someone from New Orleans. They should have just dubbed him over with the
voice from the '90s cartoon show.

Cate Blanchett, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (2008)

If you click the link above, you'll notice that at one point in the trailer, Blanchett says "You Vill help us find it," and then not ten seconds later states, "A simple 'yes' Will
do." It's called consistency. When you lack in it, how will people even
know what generic bad character trope you are going for?

It's difficult to determine in "Ocean's Thirteen" if Cheadle is going
for the British member of an elite group of highly skilled con men, or
the newest recruit to a team of chimney sweeps that he REALLY wants to
fit in with. Either way, it wouldn't make this movie any more watchable.

Some accents are simply doomed from the start. No matter how well or
how bad the actor does with them, it's not going to sound right coming
out of their face. Even if DiCaprio is doing a spot-on South African
dialect here, it just doesn't compute when you see it. And surely
shutting your eyes would only make matters worse, so it's just easier to
say it's bad. Yeah, it's bad. Sorry, Leo.

Well, at least no one was expecting gold here. Therefore, we decided
the best course of action would be to give you minimal Jessica Simpson
butchering a southern accent, and maximum Jessica Simpson in a pink
bikini butchering a southern accent.Angelina Jolie, "Alexander" (2004)

To be fair, who the hell knows how to do an Ancient Greek accent?
Just fake it and no one will be the wiser. However, if you just do a
sort of Russian accent, people are going to catch on to that pretty
quickly. Cate Blanchett could learn a thing or two here.